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Archive for the ‘challenge’ Category

I was very excited to find out last night that I won the first week of Plan to Eat’s cook alone! So what recipe did I cook last week from Jamie Oliver’s Cookbook?

A Cracking Burger

Page 146

Source: Jamie’s Food Revolution

Course: Main Course-Ground Beef

Cuisine: American

Prep Time: 20 Min

Cook Time: 20 Min

Total Time:40 Min

Serves:6

Ingredients

1/2cupbread crumbsOnly use what you need to get the ground beef to stick together

4tspdry parsleyor 4 fresh

2teaspoondijon mustard

1poundground beef

1egg

sea salt

pepper

olive oil

1romaine lettuce

3tomatoes

1red onions

pickles

6hamburger buns

cheddar cheese

Directions

Finely chop the parsley, including the stalks. Add the parsley, mustard, and ground beef to the bowl. Crack in the egg and add a good pinch of salt and pepper. With clean hands, scrunch and mix everything up well. Smooth out on a clean surface. Slowly add the bread crumbs a little at a time. You want the hamburgers to hold together. Divide into 6 and pat and mold each piece into a roundish shape about 3/4 inch thick. Drizzle the burgers with oil, put on a plate, cover and place in the refrigerator until needed (this helps them to firm up).

To cook your burger

Preheat a large grill pan or frying pan for about 4 minutes on a high heat. Turn the heat down to medium. Place the burgers on the grill pan or in the frying pan and use a turner to lightly press down on them, making sure the burger is in full contact. Cook them to your liking for 3 or 4 minutes on each side — you may need to cook them in two batches.

To serve your burger

Wash and dry a few small lettuce leaves, tearing up the larger ones • Slice the tomatoes • Peel and finely slice the red onion • Slice the pickles lengthways as thinly as you can • Place all this on a platter and put in the middle of the table with plates, cutlery, ketchup, and drinks • Remove your burgers to another plate and carefully wipe your frying pan or grill pan clean with paper towels • Halve your burger buns and lightly toast them on the grill pan or in the frying pan • Also great with a chopped salad

PS I’d still make this quantity even if it was just for 4 people. I’d wrap the extra 2 burgers in plastic wrap and put them into the freezer.

I also made homemade fries to go alone with this recipe. I found the recipe on his website as well. The fries where originally with his fish and chips recipe.

My over all thoughts on the recipe. The burgers where very good. I made them early in the day.

I then put then in the fridge so I could just pull them out when I was ready to cook them. If you want to freeze them all you need to do is layer them in-between wax paper put them in a freezer bag and pop then in the freezer! In the spring once we start to use our grill I will make quite a few homemade burgers and freeze them for a quick grab.

The one thing I messed up on with this recipe was not flatting out the burgers. They where a little small and did not fill up my homemade buns. I felt like I was eating more bread then burger. This is an easy fix but its something to remember when your making them.

The fries turned out pretty well for homemade. I always have trouble getting them crisp so I don’t make them very often. The one thing that Jamie does different is he parboils the fries before he has you fry them. I do believe this helped but they still where not as crispy as my family likes. But definitely a recipe I might try again.

The above recipe is a bit changed from the original so if you want to see the original check out his cookbook or head over to his website.

My copy of the cookbook came in the mail late last week. I plan to share some of my thoughts on it each week when I share the recipe I cooked for the challenge.

I bought the hardcover version because the paperback has not been released yet. I have not had time to go through this cookbook thoroughly yet but I am looking forward to all the different recipes. What I like about Jamie so far from what I have read is his desire to get people cooking and to spread the word that its not hard to cook a home cooked meal. He has a pledge in his book to share some of his recipes with others.

I think this is just a neat thing to put in a cookbook. So I signed and dated it and am sharing it with you. I hope you will go and buy this cookbook and share it’s recipes with others. I will share a few of his recipes here. The burger and fries I made are on his website as well.

I am excited to try more recipes and follow along with Plan to Eat as they work through all the recipes in the book. Here is the link for this weeks meals that they will be cooking from the above cookbook. Week 2 mealsI hope you will join in on this neat idea!

About six months ago a friend of mine sent me a e-mail asking me about meal planning. She was trying to get her recipes organized. She asked me what I used and also told me what she was trying. Up to that point I had been using excel to plan my meals. I would go through my cookbooks or find recipes online and using excel I would put together a two week meal plan. I was not overly happy with my system but it worked for the most part. After getting her e-mail I also started googling meal planning software and in my search I found Plan to Eat.

So what is Plan to Eat you ask? Basically its an online recipe storing/meal planning service. They offer a 30 day free trial(a year subscription is either 39 dollars a year or 4.95 a month. So I tried the 30 day trial and I have not looked back. Here is a small list of features.

1. You can import recipes from many recipe sites with a click of a button. They have a bookmark that when you find a recipe say at taste of home you click the bookmark and it instantly adds it to your recipes picture and all. All you have to do is look through to make sure it has imported everything correctly(it works amazingly well!) and click save and there it is ready for you to use. It can not do this for most blogs but they have a bulk add feature and its just about as easy and only takes a few extra minutes.

2. You then can take all these great recipes and plan your meals. You pick recipes and add them to days of the week. Once you have planned your week( or more then one week or a whole month if you want) of meals you can then get your shopping list.

3. The shopping list! O the shopping list makes the 39 dollars a year the best money I have ever spent. Basically the shopping list works like this. It adds all the ingredients you need for the recipes you have picked for that weeks meal plan and puts them into a easy shopping list. It has many options and you will spend a little time at first setting it up to your liking.

Here is a picture of my list at the end of a shopping trip. I have cut my shopping time by 25% I bet since I started using this site. The shopping list has so many options that you will just have to try it out for yourself but the one that might interest a lot of you is the ability to shop by store. So if you go to more then on store you can easily make a list for each!

The other thing I love about this site is the fact that the owner is always adding updates! Your going to get your moneys worth if you sign up. They have a great facebook page HERE. They are also passionate about cooking home cooked meals which leads me to the next exciting thing. They are doing a challenge and give away right now on their blog! Its called Cooking through Jamie’s Food Revolution. Here is how it works. Each week on Sunday night they will post a meal plan for the next week using Jamie Oliver’s cook book. They plan to cook all the recipes in the book. Each week one person who as cooked one recipe and posts about it in the comments will get a FREE year of Plan to Eat!! How cool is that? So head over and read more about it!

Tomorrow I will post the recipe I tried for this week. I hope you will join in on this challenge what a great way to try some new recipes(and buy a new fun cookbook) and maybe get a great prize. Here is a link to the cookbook on Amazon.com. Lets get cooking!